George Fratton
Author, Editor, Instructor, Journalist, Translator
United KingdomBiography
George Fratton is a linguist who loves to make other people smile in this Vale of Lunacy. As a boy, he never had a problem with authority. Sixty years on, he has now. He was born and 'bread' (Yes, 'bread', because his parents attempted to have him thrown in the dough mix at the local bakery and report him missing a week later, and a few days after that) in Portsmouth, UK, and Gosport across the harbour. He has lived in the Middle East for most of his working life because he studied Arabic at Durham University, whence he graduated in 1977. He has taught English, French and Arabic, and churns out stories about misunderstandings and punning. You always know when he is nearby because he exudes a waft of yeast on a hot day.
Books by George Fratton
If you fantasize about 'doing away with' your nearest and no-longer-dearest, the stories in the collection will not realize your fantasies but they may raise a smile. Otherwise, the essays about language are thought-provoking and light-hearted. The stories were inspired by a daily feature in the Cairo-based English-language daily newspaper, The Egyptian Gazette, with which I have been associated since 2000 (AD, not BC), entitled ‘Red Handed’ that chronicled crimes and misdeeds by some of the people of this country.
Sophie, ten (but she might be eight and a half or nine and three-quarters) puts on her mummy's shoes and clip-clops into disaster and guilt. When her ‘best-est' friend Jessica is on holiday, Sophie is so desperate for someone to play with that she ends up at the home of the weirdest girl in her school, who has a morbid interest in funerals... for soft toys. As for their invented language, not only do Sophie and her ‘best-est' friend understand it, but so do sinister beings from elsewhere in the universe.